Horses for courses as Kenny takes the long-term view

IT WAS the moment people across Ireland recoiled in horror as they realised the muck they had been fed after it emerged 99% of the Coalition’s programme for government contained horse manure.

How such a gruesome strain contaminated all the prime beef election promises of hope, recovery and putting the bankers in their place (that place, preferably, being jail) remains a mystery, but the reputational damage will take along time to wipe away.

Not that Enda Kenny is so bothered as to consider a rebrand or anything. Oh, no, indeed, he has announced/threatened to go on as Taoiseach into the 2020s.

The (hopefully) jokey admission was prised out of Mr Kenny by European Council president Herman Van Rompuy as they celebrated Ireland assuming the rotating presidency of the EU.

But clearly not content with being seen as nominal head of the EU for six months, Mr Kenny insisted he wanted to remain Taoiseach for another decade.

After Mr Kenny referred to David Cameron’s recent remark that he plans to stay on as British prime minister “until 2020 and beyond”, Mr Van Rompuy showed a previously unknown playful side by asking: “You too?”, to which the Taoiseach replied: “Yes, of course.”

The ambition will more than irk Blueshirt opponents who tried to topple Mr Kenny in an ill-thought out heave in June 2010 — not least prominent plotter Simon Coveney.

Mr Coveney has had a good burger crisis so far, and shown himself to be a smooth pair of hands — though he will have to do something about that slightly superior “this is soooo beneath me” look he deployed when getting a good, erm, grilling over the dodgy burgers on Prime Time.

And, for now anyway, Mr Coveney has got away with the fact his officials knew of the food scare a full month before they bothered to inform the Agriculture Minister — and via him the meat eating public — which suggests Mr Coveney may not be providing the smack of firm government within his department.

Desperate attempts by Fianna Fáil to contaminate the minister’s reputational DNA with a big dollop of dither and doubt accusations have failed to resonate with a public reassured by Mr Coveney’s softly spoken tones. Though you do have to grudgingly admire the sheer nerve of Fianna Fiasco for demanding open government when they blatantly lied to the nation that they had just surrendered economic sovereignty to foreigners at the very moment the IMF were landing at Dublin Airport to take command of their new, bankrupt, little colony.

So all Mr Coveney has to do now is get Enda out of the way to finally climb to the top of what Disraeli once called “the greasy pole” of politics.

Looking around the top table there are not too many obstacles in his way after Richard Bruton fluffed his chance spectacularly back in 2010 when he launched a staggeringly amateurish bid to oust Mr Kenny after being pressed on late night TV whether he would make a better leader than Enda, he babbled, bizarrely: “In my pillow, I have those sorts of views.”

With a generational shift essential in the next Blueshirt hand-over, potential opponents suffer from opposite drawbacks. Thrusting Thatcherite Leo Varadkar is too cautious to show his hand, and although he certainly doesn’t lack ambition, he is said to harbour some doubts whether he will ever be Taoiseach. While loud and proud Europe Minister Lucinda Creighton suffers no such problems as her ambition could hardly be more visibly electric if she actually plugged herself into the national grid.

Thus Coveney seems the shoe-in — even though he clearly lacks what George Bush Snr so eloquently defined as “the vision thing”.

But then as he would be following in the footsteps of such myopic national leaders as Mr Kenny and Brian Cowen, that would hardly be something new for the country to bear.

And maybe that is no bad thing, given the track record of Taoisigh who did claim to master the vision thing.

Charles Haughey sowed the seeds for Fianna Fáil’s eventual self-destruction while amassing the equivalent of €75m in today’s money, according to the Moriarty Tribunal, in “gifts” from business leaders. Talk about a Taoiseach for sale.

And sadly, Bertie Ahern’s vision became somewhat obscured by the bundles of used twenties that would be regularly plonked down on his desk in St Lukes by various cronies and associates.

So maybe Mr Coveney can make a virtue of being a tad, well, boring, after all.

And while Enda may aspire to a near endless reign, history is not on the side of either himself or fellow austerity Tory, Mr Cameron, as boasts of political longevity have usually proved vainglorious on both sides of the Irish Sea in the past.

Margaret Thatcher’s insistence that she would “Go, and on, and on,” as prime minister was seen more as a threat than a bonus by terrified colleagues who eventually toppled her as PM and Conservative Party leader in a coup she later described as “treachery with a smile on its face”.

And Haughey’s off-hand musing that “Some Chinese leaders go on into their eighties....” proved to be something he could not emulate, while Bertie’s intention to remain Taoiseach until 2012 also came somewhat unstuck when the Mahon corruption probe started sniffing around, and he bailed early in 2008.

British bookmakers also expect Mr Cameron — now about to drag his country, our biggest trading partner, into a triple-dip recession — to be out of power after the next scheduled UK election in two and half years’ time despite his Enda-esque aspirations.

But at least Mr Kenny’s desire to take us safely into the next decade has finally answered critics who accuse him over the vision thing.

We now know Enda does have 2020 vision, for himself anyway — unless Simon says no, of course.

Mr Coveney’s quietly reassuring smile has seen him sail through Horseburger-gate so far — but he may yet go down in Blueshirt history as the smiling knife.